Amendment clarifies $2 million brownfields cleanup transfer to Environmental Contingency Fund

A technical amendment to H.479 will authorize the secretary of natural resources to use a remaining $2,000,000 from an earlier brownfields appropriation, after committee staff corrected statutory language to transfer the money into the Environmental Contingency Fund.

James Duffy of the Joint Fiscal Office told the committee that a fiscal‑year 2024 appropriation of $2,500,000 for brownfields assessment, planning and cleanup had been partially spent and that an estimated $2,000,000 remained. Duffy said the correction is strictly technical: the original large bill used language that "appropriated" money from the general fund to the Environmental Contingency Fund, when the proper mechanism to move money between funds is a transfer. "You don't appropriate money from 1 fund to another. You transfer money for funds from 1 fund to another," Duffy said during the meeting.

The fix will change the bill text so the fiscal transaction is a transfer from the general fund into the Environmental Contingency Fund (ECF) and will explicitly give the secretary of natural resources spending authority to apply the transferred $2,000,000 to brownfields site assessment, planning and cleanup. Committee members said similar language will appear in both chamber vehicles (the House and Senate housing bills) and that the committee would include the technical amendment in its amendment packet.

Committee members asked where the missing $500,000 had gone; staff said DEC had been spending from the original appropriation and finance estimated roughly $2,000,000 remained. Members did not take a final statutory vote in the workshop; instead they directed staff to fold the technical language into the amendment the committee will offer.